Salesforce Trailhead, the career accelerator

Trailhead is a platform developed by Salesforce in which every person on this planet with an email address or a LinkedIn/Facebook account can join. That means that worlds leading CRM provider is open to basically everybody!

Salesforce Trailhead

Starting from scratch, no problem

There isn’t a single prerequisite to join, having an IT-background or not is irrelevant! Maybe some of the more complex modules would be easier with some IT experience but it isn’t needed. Every nurse, teacher, lawyer or early school leaver that would like to consider a change in their life (into the IT business) or expending their knowledge just for the fun of it, should consider opening a Trailhead account.

Learn the trade

Once you have created an account, you can decide to specialize yourself in different areas. There are trails in marketing, sales, service or even management skills. You could train yourself to become an admin or a developer. All Trailhead trails contain several modules. All these modules are related or to a certain part of Salesforce, for example ‘Sales cloud’ or to a certain skill for example ‘Admin beginner’.

Trailhead Playground

Modules must be completed by doing a quiz or a hands-on challenge. The quizzes are multiple choice questions that are related to the studied modules. The hands-on challenge is challenging you to put learned skills into practice within a Playground. A playground is a free Salesforce instance to practice your skills, for example building an email workflow.

Where to start

Probably you are wondering where to start? It’s recommendable to think about what skill you want to learn or which role you would like to play. If you would like to get big Sales deals closed and would like to take away every obstacle for sales people, focus then on Admin modules in combination with Sales Cloud related modules. In no time you will be able to setup an opportunity process in which sales members can cooperate, advice and help each other, in one single org!

Prep to be certified

Even though Trailhead is a great and fun way of learning, becoming a certified Salesforce Admin or Consultant can be quite a challenge. These certifications require specific and in-depth knowledge about the subject. Personally, I would always recommend (based on experience) to take additional training to get ready for the Salesforce certification exams.